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A movement among conservatives to end government involvement in education received a boost when broadcaster James Dobson encouraged parents to remove their children from public schools that offer pro-homosexual curriculum.

"In the state of California, and in places that have moved with the direction that they've gone with the schools, if I had a child there, I wouldn't put that youngster in public schools," the Focus on the Family president said during a radio broadcast in March. "They're being taught homosexual propaganda and these other politically correct, postmodern views. I think it's time to get our kids out. We cannot sacrifice our kids on the altar of some kind of public school's ideal."

Exodus Mandate and the Alliance for the Separation of School and State are two national advocacy groups unrelated to Focus on the Family that are benefiting from Dobson's call. The alliance's website (www.sepschool.org) allows individuals to sign an online proclamation that says, "I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education." After Dobson's broadcast, 6,000 people from across the nation added their names to the proclamation.

Since 1998 California lawmakers have enacted laws requiring schools to teach tolerance of minorities and mandating that teachers receive tolerance training, says Karen Holgate with the Capitol Resource Institute, a Christian advocacy group in Sacramento. (The group formed in 1987 with help from Focus on the Family.) Holgate says state law includes "gender and sexual orientation" under protected minority status. State law, however, does not mandate a single curriculum.

In Hayward Unified School District, for example, some elementary school teachers use Preventing Prejudice, which includes lesson plans titled "What is a boy/girl?" and "Coming out," Holgate says.

"The school [should] act as an extension to the home and not undermine the parents," says Marshall Fritz, president of the Alliance for Separation of School and State, which has Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant supporters.

"It's not our job to sacrifice our children in a harmful environment for some vague idea that we have to help public schools," says E. Ray Moore, president of the Christian group Exodus Mandate. He says many Christian parents try to encourage their children to be a godly example in their schools. But sending a 10-year-old to evangelize probably is not going to be effective. "Most conversion is taking place in the opposite direction."

Some Christian critics of public education do not support a universal pullout. "Parents have to acknowledge that they have a responsibility before God for the education of their children," says Ron Crews, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute. "But I'm not going to play God, saying this is what parents ought to do."

The state of Massachusetts shows a consistent commitment to advancing homosexual rights. "There is $1.5 million in our state budget for the promotion of gay/straight alliance clubs for every school," Crews says. "That's a real concern."

Crews says parents must make a prayerful decision about what is best for each child. "[Parents] need to say to the school, 'If our child comes, we are coming with this child.' "

In Novato, near San Francisco, parents who belong to the First Educators' Alliance, a local support group for Christians, are embracing that approach. During the past year, they have attended school board meetings to speak out against the district's Equity Action Plan, which promotes pro-homosexual curriculum in the name of school safety, says spokeswoman Sara Lockwood.

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August 5 2002, Vol. 46, No. 9